I remember reading that the French hired a battalion of former German SS soldiers to fight in Vietnam in the early 1950s. They operated for for about 3 years and virtually shut down travel on what would become the Ho Chi Minh trail. They were know as the Battalion of the Damned.

I once read a book written my a member of that force. They were all French Foreign Legion and worked with the French Para's.

I recall clearly one episode in the book where they had identified the location of a Viet minh regiment in the jungle and then positioned a heavy machine gun at each of 3 positons around them. They then called in a French air strike at night, at the correct time each MG opened fire with 100% tracer ammunition in the direction of one their own guns!!

The result was a "triangle" of tracer fire easily visable to the approaching French aircraft who simply had to drop their bombs and rockets within the marked target area!!

Well, after 1945 the Foreign Legion contracted numerous soldiers "on the dole". Many of them were, of course, ex-Axis POW's like Romanians, Hungarians and Italians but most of them were Germans and some of them were Waffen SS. The French authorities just closed their eyes to that, as long as the recruit hadn't been involved in massacres or in the extermination camps.

They fought from 1946 onwards in Indochina and then in Algeria as well.

There is also an interesting anedocte about the recruitment of POW: a French general was in a POW camp recruiting for the FL when he came across with a French soldier in Waffen SS uniform. The General asked in anger "aren't you ashamed of being a French and being dress with another countrie's uniform?!?" but the soldier replied "well, sir, you are also a French and you dress an American uniform..."

Many historians feel that the "Devil's Guard" may be fiction. Or, if non-fiction, highly exagerated. Their reasoning include: highly anti-communist tone, very exagerated triumphs by the unit, and no official records of the main character in the FFL. The only records are those of his SS unit in WWII.

You are right, many SS soldiers of the Waffen SS went to Vietnam. Also keep in mind that many Waffen SS prisoners were given a choice, (1) die in the Eisenhowere death camps or (2) go to French Indo China and take a chance fighting in the Foreign Legion and living.

A good book to read about these Death Camps that the Americans ran is called "Other Losses" by James Bach

You are right, many SS soldiers of the Waffen SS went to Vietnam. Also keep in mind that many Waffen SS prisoners were given a choice, (1) die in the Eisenhowere death camps or (2) go to French Indo China and take a chance fighting in the Foreign Legion and living.

A good book to read about these Death Camps that the Americans ran is called "Other Losses" by James Bach

People died in the internment camps after the war, that doesn't mean they were death camps. They don't even compare to the Nazi camps where people were intentionally starved or worked to death or the extermination camps where people were murdered on an industrial scale.

You'd better have more sources than one author before you make claims like that, considering the death toll of so many civilians by the Nazis.

There is also an interesting anedocte about the recruitment of POW: a French general was in a POW camp recruiting for the FL when he came across with a French soldier in Waffen SS uniform. The General asked in anger "aren't you ashamed of being a French and being dress with another countrie's uniform?!?" but the soldier replied "well, sir, you are also a French and you dress an American uniform..."

I can give ,ore information in regards to the above incident. The General was French General Leclrec and the soldiers in question were a small group (about 6) of recently captured French members of the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division. After hearing the remark, Leclrec ordered the prisoners executed.

The Charlemagne "Division" was orgainized late in the war and included both a small number of dedicated French Waffen SS volunteers and a far larger number of press ganged and poorly motivated French conscript laborers, French who had been considered "Germans" for a variety of reasons, and fleeing economic collaborators. Most of the division melted away, but a small number of the genuine volunteers fought their way into Berlin in 1945 to participate in the "last stand".

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